Lee Brothers Big Game Hunters

Ernest Lee takes Sounder, Blue and Judge out for a little "cold" trailing" practice. In Arizona, dryness makes game scents lie lightly on the ground and the hounds must develop keen sense of smell. After trailing mountain lions in Arizona it is easy work for these hounds to follow tigres in Mexico or cougars in British Columbia (Photograph by Chuck Abbott).

LEE BROTHERS, Big Game Hunters, Chiracahua Mountains, Arizona, U. S. A. That was the way an European sportsman addressed a letter to the hunters and guides of Arizona. It crossed the Continent and the Atlantic to reach this nation and was delivered to the brothers at their camp in Paradise, high in the Chiracahua mountains of southeastern Arizona where the clear air carried far the bay of their hunting hounds and the frustrated scream of a caged mountain lion whose habits they are studying.

Postal clerks have had to be almost as good hunters as the Lee Brothers to deliver their mail. One letter from Mexico, addressed in Spanish, carried these lines: 'Li Brothers, Well Known Hunters in Mexico, Tucson, Arizona.' It reached them at their headquarters home in Tucson, just as did another addressed to this non-existent town: "Rillito Creek, Arizona."

Sportsmen over the world and American postal clerks are more familiar with the achievements of the Lee Brothers than the average Arizonan. Motion picture fans recognized Gary Cooper, sitting in a basement corner ofa Tucson store last winter, but they did not know the man with whom he talked. It was Ernest E. Lee, oldest of the brothers and founder of the hunting firm. The Hollywood star and Lee were having a "camp fire hunt" as autograph seekers found them hidden behind saddles and boxes in the store's basement.

There are four of the Lee Brothers who have devoted most of their time and energy to big game hunting and to guiding parties in the southwest and Mexico for the past 15 years. Ernest E. Lee is their leader, but working with him are Vincent, Clell and Dale, the last two having been trained by Ernest from their 'teens in the fine art of hunting. All show their Virginia ancestry, which goes back to Fitzhugh Lee and Robert E. Lee. They are tall, fineboned, courteous, soft spoken, and clear thinking. What must be learned about them from others is their courage and ability as hunters for they are not braggarts. They have all known the thrill of crawling into caves after mountain lions and tigres whose eyes glow in the flashlight's beam and whose screams of death pile sounds upon the shattering reverberations of rifle shots. They all know nights beside a small campfire in remote mountains or dense jungles and the sorrow of losing one of their best hunting dogs under the mighty blow of a bear or the skullcracking grip of a tigre's jaws.

They have been close to death and been unafraid. They have killed bears by the score, over a thousand mountain lions, dozens of tigres in Mexico, and many lynx and cougars. These they have slain not in blood lust or to pile up records or to secure fine pelts, but because, as government hunters or as guides for eastern sportsmen, they know they are helping protect the livestock of farmers and cattlemen with the death of every predator.

They have developed the best known strain of hunting hounds on this continent, according to the published statements of recognized authorities, and have been featured in sportsmen's magazines, yet not one of the four has any strutting vanity. They know some of the wealthiest and most famous men of America, but when the Lee men call them by their first names it is a compliment for the Lees' standards for character and sportsmanship are high. Beware the man they call "Mr. So-and-So" at the end of a hunting trip.

The Lee Brothers have pioneered in the business of big game hunting, putting their minds to bear on an industry that requires foresightedness, more than hindsight, and the most careful planning of every detail. In their 15 years in the business they have been among the few such hunters and guides in the nation who have guaranteed sportsmen the game that was sought or a refund of expenses incurred on the trip.

They have raised mountain lions and bears at their Paradise camp in the Chiracahuas solely that they might study those creatures' habits and better know how to bring them low on a hunt. They know the mountain ranges of Arizona and Mexico and what conditions will cause lions and bears to drift from one range to another. They know Mexico's terrain and hunting conditions for more than a thousand miles south of the international border. But they have also hunted in the Big Cypress country of Florida and in the damp woods of Oregon.

The Lee Brothers had some practical ideas about the inclusion of woodsman training in military courses long before the Bushmasters of Panama were in training or the Commandos of England began their midnight raids on the French coast. They find "pathetic" the inability of city-raised American pilots, forced down, to take care of themselves once on the ground. They believe these pilots should have expert training in sign reading, path finding, trailing and general knowledge of the woods so they may get back safely to their units.

The brothers grew up knowing what others must be taught. Their father, William P. Lee, before them had been a frontiersman, a skilled trailbreaker and pathfinder who had migrated from the family home in Virginia westward to Texas and then into Arizona in 1908. He would have gone adventuring into Mexico or South America that year if his wife had not looked at her growing family and said, firmly "No." So they settled in the Chiracahua moun-tains where Apaches had ceased only recently by expert scouting of the country into which their war-path activities. There the family the sportsmen would be taken. There could be grew to include seven boys and one daughter nothing haphazard in the expensive business and when Father Lee died it was the oldest of guiding rich hunters to whom a “money son, Ernest, who held the brothers together back” guarantee was made if the game were not close to their mother by establishing their huntproduced. So the Lee Brothers have become ing and guiding firm. experts in planning trips and stalking game.

Three "bad killers" had been working on elk herds in the Hualpai mountains near Kingman. The Lees were assigned to deal with them. They did, but lost hunting dogs in fights with the mountain lions which refused to be treed.

Actually, that business grew unexpectedly They have to be expert planners for human out of the brothers' occupations as ranchers and lives, comforts and the fun of a successful hunt miners in remote country, where to protect their rest entirely upon their shoulders. Take, for stock or themselves, they had to keep brightly illustration, the tigre hunting trip planned for polished their skills as woodsmen and hunters. John K. Howard of Boston and his two daughThe government learned of their abilities and ters and son. The party went into the San hired them to hunt predators. Sportsmen learnIgnacio district northeast of Mazatlán in Sinaed it “is always good hunting when the Lee men loa, Mexico. Mr. Howard, president of the are with you” and asked to be taken on trips. New England Museum of Natural History and Little by little the reputation of the brothers an attorney, was accompanied by his 15-yeargrew until 15 years ago it became necessary to old daughter, Jean, his son, John Jr., both of establish hunting and guiding as their principal whom wanted to bag and did bag tigres, and business, at least for Ernest, Vincent, Clell and his daughter, Anne, who went along for the Dale. There could be nothing casual about the planning of a trip which inSportsmen are absolutely dependent upon volved the safety of three young people who their guides, so the Lee Brothers made their had never been on a big game hunting trip beprimary principle one of complete honesty in fore, nor was there. dealing with big game hunters from over the world. Since sportsmen take time off from It was on that junket that Old Goldie, one their businesses to bag their game, the Lee's of the Lee strain of hunting hounds, got into decided to guarantee them whatever creatures trouble and leaped to the front pages of Boston they wanted to hunt. This could be done only newspapers. Old Goldie was a hard headed, inby extensive knowledge of wild life habits and dependent creature who knew a hot tigre trail when her nose picked it up. The Howard party had killed one tigre and the next day set off on the trail of a second.

All through the night before that second day of hunting the jungle air had throbbed with the roars and grunts both of the tigre horn, as manipulated by Ernest Lee, and the answering mating calls of a real male tigre who crashed through the thick brush. Mr. Howard described that tigre call as “a cross between a cow in pain and a locomotive picking up speed.” When dawn came the saddles were on the horses, the guides and guns were ready, and the hounds strained at their leashes. Off went the party on the trail of that tigre. Old Goldie followed, baying with the best, for some distance and then set off on her own into the jungle. The party continued, thinking Old Goldie's nose was leading her on a cold trail and she'd find out her mistake shortly and return to the party. The day passed. Another tigre was killed by the Howard family. Sunset time found them back in camp, but Old Goldie was not there. The next morning Ernest Lee set off to follow her trail. He found her at the bottom of a precipice from which she had been thrown after a valiant fight alone with a tigre. She had a broken hind and foreleg, was scratched and torn, but still alive.It was Mr. Howard who insisted Old Goldie be saved if for no other purpose than as a breeding bitch. It was he who set those broken bones, Old Goldie licking his face despite her pain and his strangeness. It was he who tried to get the Southern Pacific of Mexico to let him have a drawing room in which to move Old Goldie from Mazatlán to Tucson. He spent most of the time in the baggage car tending her as they returned from a hunt on which father, daughter and son had all gotten beauti-ful tigre specimens. When Mr. Howard told a Boston audience at a meeting of the Museum of Natural History, not of his success as a (Continued on Page Forty-two) Hog-tied and muzzled, this four-month old tigre finally gave up his fight. He was captured on the upper Rio Yaqui in Sonora, Mexico by Fred J. McCormick, world traveler of New Orleans, and is in the zoo there.